Study On The Interaction Effect Of Product Type And Claim Type On Consumers’ Purchase Intention Of Sugar-free Food

The excessive intake of sugar in the daily diet can lead to overweight,cardiovascular disease and diabetes,so in the face of the current serious situation of diabetes prevention and control,countries have controlled people’s sugar intake by imposing "sugar tax",adding food labels and issuing dietary guidelines.This has also stimulated the global food industry’s innovative energy,so that the de-sugarization has become the main theme of food companies’ R & D production.The "Healthy China" is an important part of the 2035 development goals,proposing to carry out the "Healthy China initiative" and advocate healthy lifestyles.Furthermore,the Healthy China Action(2019-2030)also specifies the daily sugar intake of residents and encourages consumers to choose sugar-substituted foods and beverages.A series of healthy consumption policies have brought greater opportunities for the development of sugar-free food industry in China and created a broad consumer market and quality development environment for sugar-free foods,but the poor taste has negatively affected consumers’ intention to purchase sugar-free products.The use of food production technology to improve taste is long,costly and unstable,so marketers need to add appropriate sugar-free labels to enhance buyers’ acceptance and to promote sales of sugar-free foods.However,in the area of food consumption,there are still few studies on sugar-free foods,and the factors influencing the purchase intention are not yet clear.In this study,with reference to the stimulus-organism-response(SOR)theory,a theoretical model of consumers’ willingness to purchase sugar-free food was established with product type and claim type as stimulus(S),health perception,taste perception and health awareness as organism(O),and sugar-free food purchase intention as response(R).After that,a 2(product type: utilitarian product and hedonic product)× 2(claim type: healthy claim and hedonic claim)between-group experiment was conducted to investigate the mechanism of the interaction effect of product type and claim type on the purchase intention of sugar-free food.Finally,the following findings were obtained from the questionnaire survey of 1107 subjects through online research,data collation and analysis using SPSS 23.0.1.The interaction of product type and claim type had a significant effect on purchase intention for sugar-free food.Specifically,when buying sugar-free foods,consumers were more likely to choose utilitarian products with hedonic claims and hedonic products with health claims.2.Health perception and taste perception intermediated the interaction effect of product type and claim type on consumers’ intention to purchase sugar-free foods.3.Health consciousness moderated the interactive effect of product type and claim type on consumers’ willingness to purchase sugar-free foods.The findings of this paper not only enrich the research in the field of sugar-free food consumption,but also provide management suggestions for government regulators and marketing insights for sugar-free food manufacturers.